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Just how old is your mind? In the video game and film “Assassin’s Creed,” ➯➱ ➫ ➪➬

ᴠɪᴅᴇᴏ ᴜɴᴀᴠᴀɪʟᴀʙʟᴇ
ᵖˡᵃʸᵇᵃᶜᵏ ᵒⁿ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ʷᵉᵇˢᶦᵗᵉˢ ʰᵃˢ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵈᶦˢᵃᵇˡᵉᵈ ᵇʸ ᵗʰᵉ ᵛᶦᵈᵉᵒ ᵒʷⁿᵉʳ
𝒲𝒶𝓉𝒸𝒽 ℴ𝓃 𝒴ℴ𝓊𝒯𝓊𝒷ℯ

the main character   Desmond Miles lives an ordinary mundane life when he learns something incredible about his family history: he’s the direct descendant of assassins from the Third Crusade, the Italian Renaissance, and the American Revolution.  Scientists use an experimental technology that allows Desmond to relive the memories of his ancestors which are stored inside his own DNA. The technology works because somewhere deep within his genes, his ancestor’s memories live on,   giving rise to a kind of ancestral memory. But  this is of course just science fiction. Or is it? Some psychologists are now studying an area  called “genetic memory” which are memories   we’re born with. Memories we have before we’ve  ever experienced the world. And are somehow   incorporated into our genes over time. One of  the ways we see this is in mice. In a 2013 study,   mice were trained to be afraid of the smell of  a chemical called acetophenone, which has been   compared to the smell of cherries and almonds.  They did this by releasing the smell into the cage   just before giving them small electric shocks. The  mice quickly learned that whenever they smelled   acetophenone it was a sign that they were about  to be electrically shocked to the point where   they would shake in fear whenever they smelled  the chemical. Incredibly, scientists found that   when these mice had babies, these babies had  somehow inherited their fear of the same smell,   even though they had never smelled or come in  contact with acetophenone in their lives. A   third generation of mice, their grandchildren,  also inherited this reaction to the same smell,   which suggests that these memories were somehow  being passed on through their genes into future   generations. A similar effect was found in a  controversial 2015 study of holocaust survivors,   which found that the tremendous stress experienced  from people who lived through the holocaust may   have been passed on to their children, even though  these children never experienced the holocaust   themselves. This study definitely has its critics,  and the question for many skeptics is how could   these memories be stored? Because our traditional  understanding is that memories are formed through   networks of cells called neurons in the brain, but  researchers are discovering a new kind of memory   that’s stored within the nucleus of these cells,  deep within our DNA. And this raises another   question: if there is such a thing as genetic  memory, what part of the genome codes for it?   Science doesn’t have an answer. We haven’t  yet discovered the purpose of many segments   of our genetic code. There’s an estimated 20,000  to 30,000 genes that make up the human genome. In   the past they’ve been dismissed as “Junk DNA” but  some of these segments may contain genetic memory. This might seem like a new idea, but it’s not. The  idea of a collective memory that’s passed on from   our ancestors can be traced to one of the most  influential psychologists in history: Carl Jung. As a psychiatrist by training, Jung would go  on to create his own approach to psychoanalysis   called analytical psychology. Before Carl Jung,  the dominant theory put forward by psychologist   Sigmund Freud was that the mind was made up of two  main parts: a conscious mind, which consists of   all the things we’re aware of including the ego,  and an unconscious mind which is made up of all   the things we aren’t aware of, a repository of  repressed emotions and desires. Freud believed   that when we experience something very disturbing  or upsetting, those memories are pushed away into   the unconscious mind where they’re hidden from our  conscious awareness, but continue to influence our   actions. This, he argued, was a psychological  defence mechanism which he called “repression.” Jung and Freud were actually close friends  and collaborators. Early in their friendship,   Freud would come to see himself as Jung’s mentor.  He once called Jung “my adopted eldest son,   my crown prince and successor.” And he hoped  that Jung would one day carry forward Freud’s   own psychoanalytic approach to psychology, but  this would never come to pass. Tensions grew   as Jung went on to develop his own theories of  psychology, which diverged sharply from Freud’s.   Their disagreements grew. In 1909 both Jung and  Freud were invited to lecture at Clark University   where they also spent time analyzing each  other’s dreams. Jung described a dream where   he was on the top floor of a house, which was  filled with beautiful paintings. He then went   down to the main floor of the house, which was  much older the furniture was medieval and dark.   As he looked closer at the floor, he found a small  door, which led into the basement. And when he   went down the steps, he saw piles of bones, broken  pottery, and two human skulls on the ground. Freud demanded to know who the two skulls belonged  to, because he believed that Jung was harboring an   unconscious death wish against those people. But  Jung disagreed with Freud’s interpretation of the   dream. Jung believed that the house in the dream  represented the human mind, and each floor was a   different level of consciousness. The upper floor  symbolized the conscious mind, the ground floor   was the unconscious mind, and deep in the basement  was the most fundamental level of all, the part of   the mind that stores the collective memories of  our ancestors. Jung called this part of the mind   the “collective unconscious.” Freud resisted these  ideas and it marked the beginning of what would   become two separate schools of thought. And their  growing disagreements would lead to the bitter end   of their friendship. And in September of  1913 they would meet for the last time.
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So what exactly was this idea that caused such  a dramatic rift in their friendship? What is   the collective unconscious? We can think of  it as a kind of universal human memory. A   storehouse of symbols in imagery derived from  eons of history and evolution. We inherit the   collective unconscious from our ancient ancestors  and it’s common to every person and every culture   in the world. It’s a part of the mind that we all  have available to us, and we can all tap into.   And Jung saw within the collective unconscious,  the potential for reaching our highest selves,   which he sometimes referred to as the “two  million year old mind that’s in all of us.”   And so it’s often asked: how did he come up with  this revolutionary idea? Jung describes working   with mentally ill patients who would suddenly  produce startling imagery and symbols that were   remarkably similar to those of distant cultures  and religious traditions that they couldn’t have   come in contact with. His patients never traveled  outside of Switzerland and they were never exposed   to these ideas. It was here that he began to  form the idea of the collective unconscious. Jung   maintained that the collective unconscious was  made up of psychic structures that are universal,   that form all the elements of human experience,  and are expressed as recurring patterns that shape   our lives. He called these patterns “archetypes.”  Examples of archetypes include the great mother,   the wise old man, and the trickster. We see  versions of these archetypes in every culture   in the world, and it helps explain the remarkable  similarity in the symbols, myths, and rituals that   we find in different groups of people. Even among  those who never came in contact with one another.   But another key implication is that  archetypes are also an important part   of our personal growth and self-development. We  see this in one of the most important archetypes,   what Jung called the “persona.” The persona is  the social mask we wear when we interact with   other people in the world. It represents how  we want to be seen and understood by others.   Someone’s social media profile, their  facebook picture, or their instagram   account are fairly good indications of the  image they want to project into the world.   The persona isn’t a bad thing, it’s  part of maintaining a healthy psyche,   because we all have to take on different  social roles in order to survive in the world.   The problem is when we over-identify with one  particular mask. For instance, like the man who   defines his whole identity in terms of his job.  The flip side to the persona is what Jung called   the “shadow archetype.” The shadow is the part of  the mind that represents what we often think of as   the negative side. It’s made up of all the parts  of ourselves that we don’t want to identify with.   Often it’s because we’re ashamed of  these qualities, and for that reason   these are the aspects that we try to hide, even  from ourselves. And because of this, the shadow   remains unconscious. But it still influences our  actions. One of the ways the shadow reveals itself   is through our judgments of other people. For  example if there’s something we don’t like about   ourselves, there’s often a tendency to harshly  criticize others for having that same quality.   This is what Jung called “projection,” which  happens when we psychologically project onto   others the very same qualities that we’re  least willing to acknowledge in ourselves.   It’s basically an act of ego preservation that  enables us to deny our own faults while pushing   them onto others. Projection is often something  that we’re completely unaware that we’re doing,   and it explains the human tendency to scapegoat  groups of people to dehumanize those we disagree   with and it underlies all kinds of prejudice  and discrimination we find in the world. Jung   maintained that the only way to address this is  to confront the shadow head on, even though it’s   tinged with feelings of shame, unworthiness,  and fears of rejection. Because the shadow   isn’t all negative. It also contains all the  things that are unrealized by your conscious mind   ,and because of that your shadow also has the  potential to point to something more positive   within yourself. The best version of you, if  you haven’t realized it yet, lies in the shadow.   To see this let’s imagine someone who thinks it’s  never okay to be angry. He associates being a   good person with being nice. He negatively judges  people who express anger as having a bad temper.   The problem is that there are situations in life  where anger is an appropriate response to have.   For example when seeing injustice or watching  an innocent person being victimized. In these   situations, if we can’t harness the side of  ourselves that channels raw emotions like anger,   then we leave it open for unethical people to  take advantage of us. Incorporating aspects of   the shadow like anger into our personality  makes it possible for us to stand up for   ourselves and apply measured aggression when  more peaceful attempts to deal with unethical   people have failed. In many ways, the persona  and the shadow are mirror images of each other.   Jung, who was also a student of Taoist  philosophy, recognized the dualistic nature   of the mind. He saw that the psyche itself is  an interplay of yin and yang, of light and dark,   conscious and unconscious. And the challenge  of psychology is to find a balance between   these energies to bring them together  into a complete integration of the self. Which brings us to what just might be the  most powerful archetype in Jung’s approach   to psychology: numbers. Through studying  his patients and analyzing their dreams,   Jung came to believe that the numbers one to nine  were some of the most potent archetypal symbols   of the psyche. He noticed that these numbers  seemed to correspond to the progressive stages   of psychological development within the mind, and  he would come to conclude that numbers themselves   were the most fundamental archetype of  order. In his famous essay “Synchronicity:   an acausal connecting principle” Jung  describes the archetypal importance of numbers.
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“There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious, about numbers. If a group of objects is deprived of every single one of its properties or characteristics, there still remains at the end, its number. Which seems to indicate that number is something irreducible,   something which helps more than anything else to bring order into the chaos of appearances.   It may well be the most primitive  element of order in the human mind.” What this reveals is that numbers are the  most basic and universal symbols we have.   We can see this for instance with the number  one, which has a numerical value as we understand   it mathematically, but it also has a powerful  symbolic meaning. One is the number of beginnings,   it’s the start of something new, and  it’s also the number of individuality,   self-reliance, and striving to be the  best that one can be. At the same time,   one is also a very lonely number. It’s prone to  feelings of isolation. All of these associations   are captured in the archetypal symbol of the  number one. And we find that all the numbers   from one to nine each have powerful symbolic  associations. Jung wrote that “number and   synchronicity were always brought into connection  with one another, both possess numinosity and   mystery as their common characteristics, and  all numbers from one to nine are sacred.” What this tells us is that by understanding  the symbolism of numbers, we’re tapping into   a very primal and ancient system of knowledge deep  within the collective unconscious. And numerology   just might be one of the most  powerful ways to do that.
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Jung believed that everything is connected, that  there’s an underlying unified reality from which   everything emerges into which everything returns.  He called this idea Unus Mundus. And for the   mystic, it’s an experience in which past, present,  and future become one concrete whole. This was   central to his idea of synchronicity, where two  seemingly unrelated events aren’t connected by   cause and effect, but are connected by meaning.  This bears a striking similarity to the ancient   Chinese concept of Qi which is the vital energy  that flows through all things. Each of us has   a personal Qi that we can tap into which we can  also think of as the personal unconscious mind,   but we also have the potential to tap into  the cosmic Qi which is the unified connection   of all of our collective energies,  which unites all things in the universe,   and which we can think of as the collective  unconscious. In the next video in this series,   we’ll look at one of the most powerful tools  that Jung used to uncover many remarkable   synchronicities: the ancient Chinese text the  I Ching, also known as the book of changes.   And it’s widely considered to be one of the most  powerful oracles ever discovered. If this video is   available to watch you’ll see it appearing  here on the left. If this video is not yet   available then i think you’ll enjoy the video on  the right. If you enjoyed this video please show   your support by pressing the like button. It helps  me to bring more free content like this to you.   As always thanks so much for watching take care  of yourselves and i’ll see you in the next video.

Source : Youtube